Redemption - Garrett Leigh Page 0,8

“It’s not a fucking nightclub in here, and there’s like, three customers out front.”

“Sorry.” Luis stepped around Paolo. He bent to retrieve the broken plate, gathering the pieces with shaky hands. The tendons in his neck stood out. Everything about him screamed distress, and Paolo was struck by a sudden certainty that he was the one who’d fucked up.

He took a step forwards, but a customer called for attention.

Cursing, he dashed for the service counter and threw together the quickest bacon sandwich known to man. He served it up and returned to the kitchen, but there was no sign of the broken plate or the mess it had made. Luis was at the dishwasher, loading plates like nothing had happened.

Lacking any better ideas, Paolo left him to it.

The cafe shut at four, but it was barely three when Paolo came to find Luis to tell him he was done for the day.

Luis eyed the cleaned dishes that still needed to be put away. “What about those?”

“I’ll do them. To be honest, I wasn’t expecting you to get so much done. I’m usually just starting to catch up by now.”

Luis could believe it. The cafe did a roaring trade, and it was hard to imagine anyone could manage it on their own.

Paolo never stopped moving. If he wasn’t cooking, he was serving, taking money, or doing the thousand other things that needed doing when no one was asking for food. And he did it all with a scowl and a sharp tongue. Paolo Cilberto was a moody motherfucker. All day long, he growled and swore, muttered under his breath, and kicked anything and everything that got in his way. It was something else to watch, but Luis had spent most of the day with his head down, especially after he’d elbowed a full plate of food across the kitchen.

Mortification burnt his cheeks. He washed his hands in the sink and considered making a break for it, but the masochist in him needed to face Paolo and find out if his mini meltdown had cost him his job.

He dried his hands on a tea towel and forced himself to step out of the relative safety of the kitchen. The cafe was quiet. Paolo was sitting at a table in the corner, chewing on a pen as he frowned at some paperwork.

Luis shuffled over. “I’ll be off, then, unless you need anything else?”

“Are you coming back tomorrow?” Paolo didn’t look up as he spoke, but it felt like a trick question.

To answer yes was presumptuous, but anything else would make Luis seem like he didn’t give a shit. “Um, if you want me to?”

“You’re taking the piss, right?” Paolo dropped his pen on the table and swept his arm around the cafe. “I told you, this time most days I’m crying into the sink. I haven’t looked at the accounts in months. If you can show up a few days a week and give me a break from that, the job’s yours.”

“For real?”

“For real. I mean, we need to talk numbers and shit, and I don’t have time for that right now, but I can give you a call later so you can make your mind up?”

Luis’s heart sank. “I don’t have a phone.”

“Why not?”

Because the one I had six years ago is rotting in an evidence vault somewhere, and I don’t have the money to buy another one. “Haven’t got round to it yet.”

Paolo’s dark eyes narrowed, and he tilted his head sideways, studying Luis hard enough to make Luis squirm before he seemed to reconcile with whatever he was thinking.

He pushed his chair back with a screech that rattled Luis’s ears and disappeared into the kitchen. The minutes ticked by. Luis considered slipping out the front door and never coming back. He needed a job, but Paolo made him feel strange. One moment Luis was lost in his dark beauty, the next he was embarrassing himself over a plate of egg on toast.

Luis shuddered, the sound of the plate hitting the wall echoing in his head. In a world he didn’t hear enough of anymore, fuck, he’d heard that. Felt it too, in the pit of his stomach, as the food had splatted on the floor. It had been thirty-one hours and counting since he’d last eaten. Risking his precious cash on supplies depended on him getting a job.

On keeping a job.

With a heavy sigh, he dropped into a nearby chair just as Paolo emerged from the kitchen.

Paolo returned to his